Romance Isn't Dead

For the first time in eons, Mr. Brutalism and I had a night to ourselves thanks to a sleepover for our kid.

And I'm not embarrassed to admit that the headiness of complete freedom actually made us act a little crazy. If you define crazy as going shopping at Nordstrom Rack then watching a Netflix documentary while enjoying some sparkling water. (I promise we're not as boring as we sound -- the sparkling water was grapefruit flavored...)

Although, to his credit, Mr. Brutalism did try to spice things up while we were shopping. We were browsing in different sections of the store when he had the adorable idea to sneak up and bump into me from behind after texting "bend over, I'll drive" to my phone.

I feel this may require some context.

Those are the lyrics from a Cramps song, it always makes us laugh, it means exactly what you think and it is completely filthy.

(...did I mention it was sparkling water enemas?)

Mr. Funny Pants's prank didn't work as well as he expected, however, because as soon as he pressed "send," on his message, he realized that he sent it to his brother by mistake. So instead of finding him sneaking up behind me, I found him doubled over with laughter and unable to breathe.

As he was explaining this to me, he felt he should probably also explain it to his brother, so he sent a follow up text stating simply, "sorry...wrong person."

His brother replied with a terse, "thought so."

And that was it.

Please, let's take a moment to review:
 1- my husband felt no need to elaborate upon who he was texting this sweet nothing to
 2- his brother felt no need to probe further and ask for whom this poetry was intended
 3- his brother also felt no need to ask what this possibly meant

Which is kind of reassuring, actually. In case we ever mistakenly text him about the enemas...

Backdoor Guests are Best

It has been a tough year.

We lost my father-in-law, the fathers of three close friends, relatives and friends have been diagnosed with awful diseases, and my favorite pet of all time had to be put to sleep. (Note to self: you write a humor blog, Debbie Downer.)

So even though we have always loved hosting parties, we have really not been in the mood to do anything other than hibernate for most of this year. At least until Halloween rolled around and conveniently scheduled itself on a Saturday. As this was also one of our friend's birthdays, it seemed like a good time for us to re-enter the world and have some people over. So we put a party together a few days before and really got into the theme:

Wow. Our bathroom is even scarier than this one. (And yes,
I realized that the letters should have been backwards after the fact. You
should take solace in the fact that I don't think like a serial killer.)

Theme wines

I was explaining how we hadn't felt up to socializing in a conversation with my mom and said, "it's so good to feel normal again," just as I realized my mother was sporting tattoo sleeves, a nose ring and had a cigarette dangling from her mouth...

My mom is also the queen of Facebook and got something
like four hundred likes when she posted this photo.

Other guests also went above and beyond in the costume department. (Hopefully not just because they were informed in the invitation that, "While not mandatory, costumes are strongly encouraged and your personal fun quotient will be determined thusly."). We had doppelgangers for Katy Perry, Pepper Potts and Tony Stark (he even grew his facial hair to be identical to Iron Man's), a Howard Stern, a couple of pirates, the Unabomber (with manifesto), football players, hippies, movie characters, zombies, historical figures and a traditional (though some may say overplayed) scary banana.

Katy Perry - with autograph pen in hand.

One friend came dressed as Stitch, the furry, lovable character from Lilo & Stitch, in a costume she originally purchased for her 14-year-old daughter. Yet when she was shopping, she allegedly could not find the Stitch costume on any Disney web site (we all know how difficult Disney makes it for people to buy their branded merchandise) and ended up ordering it from a web site overseas...

...that specializes in furry costumes. (Not furry costumes, furry costumes.)

This seemed okay until she turned around and demonstrated the massive zipper running horizontally across the rear of the costume. And until I realized I HAD WITNESSED HER TEEN WALKING HOME FROM THE BUS STOP THE PREVIOUS DAY DRESSED AS A FURRY.

As weird as it may seem, I am actually grateful for this because it means that no matter how much I screw up as a parent, at least I have not bought my daughter a fetish costume.

Yet.

>sigh<  I suppose next year we'll have to add a trophy for best fetish costume
(My bronys take note.)

Canetto and I dressed as '80s college kids. I warned the guests in advance that since I tend to get very into character, it was probably best to stop by early before I drank my face off and failed chemistry for the third time.

 I was Sigma Psyched - it was so awesome!

(An aside: When I was a single girl, I used to incorporate handcuffs into every Halloween costume I wore. During Halloween parties, I would walk up to cute guys and handcuff myself to them, wordlessly. I still cannot believe how bold this was. And how successful. Just ask "Billy Idol", who I've now been married to for 16 years.)

It was Amy's birthday, so we celebrated
with cake at the party. And by reminding her that she is going to die.

And do you know when you realize you've invited the greatest guests, ever? When you find this in your fridge the next morning:

That's a face in a jar. Next to the greek yogurt.

Furry costumes correlate directly to very high personal fun quotients,
Brutalism